


All That Glitters

by TeamGwenee



Series: A Twist in the Tale [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Body Possession, F/M, Gore, body swapping, horror fic, valentine's day fic, violence against animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/pseuds/TeamGwenee
Summary: The gift Brienne receives for Maiden's Day is a double edged sword.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: A Twist in the Tale [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604908
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	All That Glitters

**Author's Note:**

> February is Women in Horror month and the month of Valentine, naturally I combined the two in a twisted Cinderella.

Maiden’s Day. A day belonging to the Gods. A day of love and innocence and purity. A day the Gods could walk the Earth.

Brienne had called in sick to work that day. That was why she was in her flat that morning. Her attendance was perfect, she even went in on days she wasn’t expected to do extra hours for free. She could stay home for just the one day. Even as her throat and head remained guiltily pain free.

The woman looking up at Brienne’s window had the most exquisitely crafted face Brienne had ever seen. That was why she was watching. She didn’t usually people watch. Head down and no eye contact. That was the way to go.

The woman caught her eye and Brienne felt herself burning beetroot red. But the woman smiled up at her with perfect rosebud lips and despite herself, Brienne smiled back.

The woman nodded at the door and Brienne blithely welcomed her into her home.

~

Brienne did not remember opening the bottle of wine. The woman had greeted her like an old friend on the steps and asked for something stronger than the offered tea, Brienne’s eyes watching through a golden blur.

Things only returned to focus when the golden woman pointed at a sparkling pink enveloped on the kitchen table.

“Going to a Maiden Day’s party later?” she asked. Her voice was like a song, silken words gliding up velvet throat and slipping off honeyed tongue.

“No,” Brienne admitted. “I…um…couldn’t make it.”

“And yet still you kept the letter?”

Brienne blushed and averted her gaze. How could Brienne explain that in Renly’s own hands he had writ ‘dearest’ and ‘Brienne’ and ‘love’. That even if those words meant nothing to him, they were _everything_ to her.

“I see,” the woman said.

Brienne doubted that. Up close the woman was even more beautiful. Gentle curves and cascading golden waves and wicked green eyes.

“Still, you must celebrate Maiden’s Day. I will be offended if you do not.”

Brienne shook her head. “Maiden’s Day isn’t for me.”

“It can be,” the woman promised. “If only you were beautiful. For one day, how would you like it walk into the room and see everyone smile. To bring sunlight wherever you walked. To be held in the arms of your beloved and for one night, see your returned in the mirror of his eyes?”

“How?” Brienne croaked.

The woman smiled, revealing row after row of perfectly straight teeth. “Brienne Tarth, how would you like to wear my skin?”

~

The Maiden’s gift has been loose on her bones to start. In every picture and mirror that now copiously appeared in her home it fit perfectly, but Brienne could feel it sag. The Maiden had promised it would adjust and with every smile on the streets, every friendly wave and nod, Brienne could feel it becoming so.

It was a pretty special thing to make people smile just by being there.

~

The weather had blessed Brienne. In a month of storms and rain the sky had seen fit to turn a merry blue. Now and then she thought a cloud had passed and threw a shadow, but the sky remained pointedly bright. The sun’s winter light turned Brienne’s into a frozen gold. Past every reflective surface she stopped and smiled. She had a lifetime of vanity to pack into one day and she would be damned if she missed it.

She considered her work colleagues friends, but when she arrived at the museum she was met with a flurry of enthusiastic and tender concerns for her health. For tender and attentive considerations that they had never shown her before.

She told herself to enjoy it and think about tomorrow when it came.

~

Her laptop was wrong. She had never noticed it before, but her laptop screen was awful. It showed her face, but it got it all wrong, it was to blurry. Too distorted. The nose was too wide, the lips too thick and dust blemished her skin like freckles.

She took it into her hands and cast it to ground. It crashed and snapped and sparked and set her assistant Pod hurrying in.

She dropped it, she told him, the lie running too smoothly off her borrowed tongue.

Pod was kind and assured her it happened all the time and all her work was backed up. Brienne had known Pod for five years, had been mentoring him. She looked away in case his smile was any different.

Everyone understood when she said she was better off at home after all.

~

The midday sun was bright so why were the shadows behind her eyes so dark? The street was empty so why could she hear footsteps, why was the back of her neck warm on this cold day, why was this perfect skin so hot and tight?

She tried to pick up the pace but the shadows drew closer, her stolen skin prickling as the darkness breathed down her back.

She turned, ready to confront whoever thought to stalk a vulnerable woman walking alone.

The street ran grey and barren before her.

~

Brienne took a shortcut home, through the back lanes and alleys. In the middle of her path sat a large black rat, licking and biting at herself. The very sight enraged her. How presumptuous and ignorant, to sit there, grotesque before her eyes. Relishing in its ugliness.

She pressed down on its back with the point of her heel, waiting for the glory of snapped bones and squelching blood. Its black eyes bulged from it skull.

It squeaked.

Brienne pulled back her feet in horror, looking desperately to see if there was something, she could carry the rat to a vet in. Thankfully, once the rat had regained its senses, it took off and scurried into the shadows, mercifully unharmed.

Brienne followed his lead and sprinted home on perilous heels.

~

He wouldn’t stop knocking.

The shadows wouldn’t stop knocking.

Brienne kept her windows pulled tight and prayed for morning.

Bitter at having lost her single night of beauty, her one chance of holding Renly and seeing that if only the face she couldn’t help had been different, there would have been a chance for them, Brienne switched on her laptop and opened Renly’s insta feed.

When the pictures of Renly kissing Loras emerged, the knocking was drowned out by a roaring in her ears.

 _The kitchen_ a honeyed tongue told her,

The kitchen. Brienne nodded.

 _The knife_ a voice of silk whispered.

Brienne rootled around in the drawer. _The knife._

The knife. She held up the friendly blade and saw herself, brutish and ugly, smiling back.

She threw it to the ground and ran. The clock said nine pm. So many hours until midnight, until the gift was returned. So many hours left to fight.

Death had been following Brienne all day. It was time to let him in.

~

The Stranger was as golden as the Maiden. His green eyes as bright and wicked, his smile as devastating.

“You took your time letting me in,” he complained with a whine. “It’s cold out there don’t you know.”

Brienne’s mouth was dry. “It does take a lot of time to let death enter your doorway,” Brienne pointed out.

“Really?” he asked with the quirk of an eyebrow. “You let her in this morning easily enough.” He laughed at her confusion and closed her open jaw. “Do you not know me Brienne Tarth?”

His touch was gentle, but his skin was rough, hard and calloused from years of use.

“The Smith,” Brienne whispered, sinking into his hand.

“And where the Stranger destroys, the Smith rebuilds,” he promised with a sardonic bow. He produced a knife, as sharp and vicious as a shark’s bite. “Now let’s remove that skin.”

Brienne swallowed. “It will be gone by midnight,” she insisted, “And then I will be ugly again.”

“Oh you will be ugly,” the Smith promised. “But the skin will not be gone.”

Brienne nodded and bowed her head, giving him leave to do as he must.

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” he told her, his voice soft.

Under his steadying grip, her hands were guided to the very peak of her head, the tip of the blade nestling into the Stranger’s gold. At his word, Brienne closed her eyes and plunged.

The skull split open and gritting her teeth, Brienne dropped the blade and grasped desperately at the seam, ripping it open. She pulled down to the shoulders, gasping, and set about tearing off great strips and scraping off stubborn sliver, each shredded nerve screaming and shrieking, until it all fell to the ground in red, salty, sloppy folds.

Slick and bare and bloodied, Brienne emerged with a scream. She stepped and stumbled with a shudder into the Smith’s open arms.

~

“I’m afraid it’s not as easy as taking off the skin,” the Smith; or Jaime, as they would be seeing more each other, explained. “You let the Stranger into your home, you gave her wine. She is not like to leave you any time soon. There is nothing for it but for me to remain beside you.”

Every morning Brienne awoke with his light outside her window, and some nights she slept with his warmth pressed beside her.


End file.
